LEADING IN THE NEW

Big bang disruption: Be the unstoppable force

REWRITE YOUR
SECOND ACT

Even successful companies don’t live forever. And now Big Bang Disruption—where new goods enter the market immediately, better and cheaper than existing products—is converting disruptors to the disrupted. Learn from the strategies of the Big Bang survivors.

View our featured article on Harvard Business Review:
Finding your company's second act

HABITS THAT HAMPER

Business leaders that focus on making their product and customer experience as compelling as possible often restrict existing assets—and the organization’s ability to flex when change bites.

Eight habits can make big bang disruptors highly vulnerable:

1. RUNNING TOO LEAN

Companies fail when they devote all their resources to a single product—the first act.

2. HAVING THE WRONG CAPITAL STRUCTURE

Companies should raise substantial outside capital for expansion and production much earlier.

3. BEING TOO FOCUSED

“Happy accidents” are invariably the source of second act success.

4. FAILING TO RETAIN FOUNDERS

Founders are often sidelined into engineering roles they find too constraining and leave.

5. OVERSERVING SHAREHOLDERS

Public investors—and the research analysts who advise them—are even more conservative than traditional creditors.

6. TRUSTING IN LUCK

Buying a winning lottery ticket does not make you an expert in lotteries.

7. RELYING ON REGULATORS

Increasingly, incumbents are turning to long-time regulators to derail insurgents and buy time.

8. SERVING THE WRONG CUSTOMERS

“Winner takes all” phenomenon means that first product customers show up all at once, sending confusing signals about future sales and follow-on product potential.

BE BIG BANG SMART

Timing is everything. Companies that want to be sustainable
must put innovation at their core, experimenting and discarding
innovations in equal measure. Learn from the masters.

BUILD A PLATFORM, NOT A PRODUCT

Most sharing economy enterprises, including Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit, have no physical assets of their own, but connect buyers and sellers while driving down the transaction costs that make interactions inefficient.

MAKE YOUR PRODUCT A SERVICE

Amazon Web Services, which generated US$718 million in operating income, hosts the software, data, and processing for millions of other enterprises, making it the dominant provider in the fast-growing cloud services business.

DON’T BE HELD BACK BY THE PAST

China’s home appliance manufacturer Haier has reconfigured nearly 64,000 employees into 180 micro-enterprises, each accounting for and sharing in its own profit and loss and launching dozens of innovative products.

MOVE RAPIDLY TO THE NEXT INNOVATION

Verizon has shifted its focus to the growing, less regulated mobile business, investing heavily in new media companies valued by its broadband customers, such as, TechCrunch, Huffington Post and Yahoo.

INVEST IN OR ACQUIRE NEXT-GENERATION DISRUPTORS

Facebook acquired virtual-reality start-up Oculus, a company that did not yet have a commercial product, for US$2 billion. Facebook sees gaming and enhanced visual interaction as core features of future social networks.

EMPHASIZE COMPANY DEVELOPMENT OVER MARKET EXPERTISE

Online HCM software company, Zenefits, left hiring and other spending and compliance unattended. Within a year the CEO was forced out, the firm lost half its value, and reduced its staff by half.

ROTATE
TO THE
NEW

MASTER NEW
ORGANIZATIONAL
ARCHITECTURES

MEET THE EXPERTS

Paul Nunes

Global Managing Director,
Thought Leadership,
Accenture Research

Larry Downes

Project Director,
The Georgetown Center for
Business and Public Policy

ABOUT ACCENTURE RESEARCH

Accenture Research shapes trends and creates data-driven insights about the most pressing issues global organizations face. Combining the power of innovative research techniques with a deep understanding of our clients’ industries, our team of 250 researchers and analysts spans 23 countries and publishes hundreds of reports, articles and points of view every year. Our thought-provoking research—supported by proprietary data and partnerships with leading organizations such as MIT and Singularity—guides our innovations and allows us to transform theories and fresh ideas into real-world solutions for our clients.

Already applied to a job?

Sign in with e-mail and password

Validation summary

Invalid username / password

There is already a separate, active Accenture Careers account with the same email address as your LinkedIn account email address. Please try logging in with your registered email address and password. You can then update your LinkedIn sign-in connection through the Edit Profile section.

There is already a separate, active account tied to your LinkedIn profile. Please continue registration for this program without your LinkedIn profile or use a different LinkedIn account or email address.